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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27068095">yours was a heavy heart to carry</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/someawkwardprose/pseuds/someawkwardprose'>someawkwardprose</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, POV Ianto Jones, POV Second Person, Pre-Series 03: Children of Earth (Torchwood), Romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 00:20:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,046</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27068095</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/someawkwardprose/pseuds/someawkwardprose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about loving Jack is this: you cannot ever let him know.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>96</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>yours was a heavy heart to carry</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>back at it again opening and completing a whole new fic instead of my nine torchwood WIPs! whoops </p>
<p>mild warnings for: cyberwoman and a brief mention of canonical suicide ideation, and canon compliant angst up to but not including children of earth</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The thing about loving Jack is this: you cannot ever let him know. </p>
<p>He loves you, you know this. He loves you, all of you: he loves Tosh and her brilliance, he loves Owen and his cantankerousness, he loves Gwen and her softness. Even Suzie, after everything she had done, he still loved her and her sharp edges. He loves you, and you’re not sure you know why, but he does. But he will lose you, all of you, and while he loves you, he will outlive you, and it will hurt. </p>
<p>You love him, and you would do anything to spare him from that. You love him, and you cannot tell him, because one day he will have to live without you, and he already has such a heavy heart to carry. You cannot make him take yours too. </p>
<hr/>
<p>You hate him, long before you love him. </p>
<p>You remember Canary Wharf. The way Torchwood Three picked through the wreckage, scavenged tech and any surviving records. Like vultures, except they stepped smoothly past the bodies to get to the computers, ignoring the corpses of Ianto’s friends for access to Yvonne’s secrets. UNIT, at least, had the decency to pretend to look for survivors.</p>
<p>You hate him, but you still want to kiss him. </p>
<p>It’s disgusting, obscene. You have Lisa, after all. But when you capture the pterodactyl together, when he is lying over you, you think: his lips look soft. <em> I wonder if he tastes as good as he smells.  </em></p>
<p>It doesn’t get better when you begin to work for him, because he’s funny, and <em> kind </em> - oh, he’s not good at it, but he tries. He’s fake, and a liar, but he tries so hard to be a decent man, and it’s easy to respect someone who wants to be good when they are not built for it. </p>
<p>You still hate him, but you hate yourself more; guilt coats your tongue like bile, gets caught in your throat and chokes you. He flirts with you, and you flirt back, and at first it is for Lisa, and then it is for you. <em> I love Lisa, </em> you think, and try not to remember your dreams, try not to think about the name you call when you jerk off in the shower. You cannot work out who you are betraying more. Lisa, for Jack, Jack, for Lisa, or yourself, for both of them. </p>
<p>You hate that he does not notice you unless he is trying to bed you. You hate that he doesn’t see that you are falling apart at the seams, spilling out of yourself like sand, and fading into the shadows. </p>
<p>You hate that he kissed you, and for one terrible, glorious second, you kissed him back. </p>
<p>His lips are soft, and he tastes better than you expected.</p>
<p><em> Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. </em>You push him away, and run, and the next day he doesn’t act any different, and you hate that it almost feels like it didn’t happen. </p>
<hr/>
<p>You hate him, because he killed her. You hate him, because he held a gun to your head but did not pull the trigger. </p>
<hr/>
<p>Then there are fairies, then cannibals, and you both break in different ways. </p>
<p>The team (Tosh, Owen, Gwen, not you - you are still not one of them) leave, furious and resentful. You do not. Jack, you think, must believe you have, because you watch him break, alone in his office. You hate him, you do, but he had to weigh the scales between one life and the world again. You made that decision, once, and you chose wrong. He does not get the reprieve of being wrong. </p>
<p>You make him tea, because it is too late for coffee, and you walk into his office. His eyes are rimmed red, and he is looking at letters, old letters; and you file that away, before placing his mug on his coaster. </p>
<p>“The world doesn’t deserve you, Ianto Jones,” he says, and your lips quirk. </p>
<p>“Good thing I don’t serve the world, then,” you say, and brush the back of his hand with your fingertips. He does not smile, but there is something on his face that makes your breath catch.</p>
<p>You still hate him, but you think you forgive him anyway. </p>
<p>A week later, and Gwen is untying you, soothing you, saying <em> it’s alright sweetheart, it’s over, you’re safe, </em> and Owen is saying, <em> let them bleed out, I want to check over Ianto first, fucking butchers, </em> and Tosh thanks you, says you were <em> strong, you were so brave, you saved me.  </em></p>
<p>You are sitting in the SUV when you finally see Jack alone, when he cups your face, inspects the damage. </p>
<p>“I should have killed them,” he murmurs, thumb stroking your cheekbone, the other hand brushing through your hair. </p>
<p>You don’t say anything, because you agree, and sometimes you hate Gwen for being soft, for needing to <em> know </em>. </p>
<p>“No one will touch you again,” he promises, and he kisses you. Just for a moment, just a soft, chaste press of his lips against your own, and he pulls away before you can even process it. You hate him, for a second, because you just about believe him. </p>
<p>The lines between love and hate are drawn in in sand, and when you feel so strongly about someone, it is very easy to let the waves wash those lines away. </p>
<hr/>
<p>You give in, after Suzie. </p>
<p>Jack’s eyes are heavy with the weight of his guilt and his grief, and you realise abruptly that you want to help him. Soothe the line between his brow, somehow. </p>
<p>You prepare her body for the morgue. This is your once-coworker, your almost-but-never-quite friend, and it hurts, but you are not doing this for her, or even you. You clean her, put her in the white scrubs, fill out the report. And when he thanks you, you know what to do.</p>
<p>Ten minutes later, he has you pressed against the wall, licking into your mouth, his hands in your hair, and you don’t think about guilt or grief or much of anything for a while. </p>
<hr/>
<p>You don’t actually realise you love him for a while. Not even when you shoot Owen for him, or even when Owen shoots him. It is when he is stretched out on the mortuary slab, his body cold and grey, that you go, <em> oh.  </em></p>
<p>Gwen gets to sit by him, because you have to go to the bathroom to throw up. </p>
<p>Then, he comes back, and he kisses you, and there is a second wave of realisation: that somehow, in some small way, he feels the same. </p>
<p>The next day, he is gone, and you do not cry, because those feelings would never be enough to make a man like him stay. </p>
<hr/>
<p>He comes back, because you are finding out that he <em> always </em>comes back. He comes back different: gentler, more broken, haunted by the shadows of what he has seen. But he is still Jack, and that traitorous organ in your chest makes itself clear who it belongs to. </p>
<p>He comes back, and he <em> asks you out.  </em></p>
<p>You say yes, of course. What else can you say?</p>
<p>He takes you to dinner, and he’s trying too hard; trying to be normal, trying to show he means it. You kiss him over dessert, strangers in the restaurant be damned, and use your lips to show him you don’t need it. What you don’t say is this: <em> I fell in love with you without knowing I could have this, and I will keep loving you even if I don’t get this </em>. </p>
<p>He tastes like hope and chocolate brownie, and when you invite him back to yours, uncertain, he kisses you back and says <em> I need you</em>. </p>
<p>He came back for you, he said. You begin to think there’s some truth in that. </p>
<hr/>
<p>There are moments: when Dale shoots at you, and the gun misfires. When you are caught by a weevil, its claws deep in your shoulder, and Jack shouts for Owen. </p>
<p>He closes his eyes when he kisses you, and traces his fingertips on your bare skin after you fuck. Pulls you onto his lap when you go over the expense reports, and takes you out on dates like a giddy schoolboy, even though he has to know by now that you are a sure thing.</p>
<p>There are moments when he looks at you, and there is something in his eyes you recognise in your own. It’s terrifying. </p>
<p>It’s exhilarating. </p>
<hr/>
<p>They lose them, Owen and Tosh, and even Jack, for a while. But Jack can come back, does come back, will always come back. Owen and Tosh do not. </p>
<p>He holds you at night, and counts your heartbeats, like a timer he is waiting to run out. </p>
<hr/>
<p>It is a kind of immortality in itself, being loved by someone who will never die. You will have no legacy, save the shattered heart of a man who was broken long before you were even born.</p>
<p>Oh, he does not say he loves you. He does not say anything really, nothing of value: he calls you gorgeous, and sexy, and compliments your cooking but you do not talk about it. </p>
<p>He does not say it, but when you go out, the three survivors, he hooks an arm around your shoulders, waits. You relax, slowly, and he smiles that brilliant smile at you when you finally lean into him. Sometimes he spins you around the Hub when Gwen goes home, telling stories of wartime, and when it ends he pulls you close and sways with you, breathing in your scent. Sometimes he takes off his wrist strap: that alone tells you something about the nature of trust. </p>
<p>He loves you, as much as he can, and sometimes you feel as though he is offering it; the bruised, swollen, pulpy mess of his heart. You would take it, take care of it, mend it as best you could, but you both know one day you’ll have to hand it back, in worse shape than before.</p>
<p>You hate him for offering you everything you want. Because you have to be the strong one, now. You have to take care of him. </p>
<p>You cannot take his heart. It would break him, when your own stops beating. </p>
<hr/>
<p>The thing about loving Jack is this: you will die because of him. </p>
<p>You knew this, long before you loved him. Torchwood is not the type of job one survives, you know this better than anyone. You have a duty, and as much as you hate him, you will do what you are told. One day, Jack will give an order, and it will end you. </p>
<p>Now, when it is more than duty, when it is more than respect, when it is loyalty and love and all the words left unsaid, trapped by the tip of your tongue: you will die following him. You don’t want to, because you don’t <em> deserve </em> to, because you are young and beautiful and in love. You are alive, and you want to <em> live </em>, want to spend every decade you can offer with this man. </p>
<p>Jack’s heart is heavy, and full. It is weighed down with grief and countless lost loves; and you do not doubt that it will get heavier as the centuries pass, because Jack was made to love and be loved in return. Some days, there is a comfort in that, because you never, ever want him to be lonely, no matter how heavy that makes his heart.</p>
<p>One day, sooner rather than later, you will add to that weight. It will be Jack’s fault, even if you will never blame him.  And no matter what you do, you cannot take the burden from him.</p>
<p>Tonight, Jack sleeps, his head on your chest, listening to your heartbeat once again, and you think: <em> even if I do not give it to you, you will carry it anyway.  </em></p>
<p>Even if neither of you will ever say it, even if he will never know the full extent of it. Even if he <em> cannot </em>know the full extent of it. For now it will be enough. It has to be enough. </p>
<p>Because the one impossible fact about loving Jack is this: he loves you back.</p>
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